Ashburn Health Care Center, Inc. v. Poole

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• affirming the denial of a motion to compel arbitration on grounds that, inter alia, there was no evidence that the decedent “knew about the arbitration agreement, authorized her husband to sign the document, or otherwise agreed to arbitrate claims arising out of her nursing home stay”
• trial court’s decision regarding whether to compel arbitration will be affirmed if right for any reason
• the mere fact that one spouse signed an arbitration agreement as an “authorized representative” of the other spouse, without more, cannot establish agency
• marriage alone does not establish an agency relationship and therefore arbitration agreement signed by husband when wife entered nursing home was not binding on wife or her estate
• although decedent’s husband signed an agreement providing that claims related to the decedent’s care at the nursing home would be arbitrated, the nursing home was unable to show that the husband was the decedent’s agent and could not enforce the arbitration agreement
• “[a]s the party seeking arbitration, [the defendant] bears the burden of proving the existence of a valid and enforceable agreement to arbitrate ... [s]uch [an] agreement is, at base, a contract, and the [FAA] does not require parties to arbitrate when they have not agreed to.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).